Police Station's Condition A Shame

September 06, 2000|By Helen Pugliese Plainville

On Aug. 29, I attended a meeting of my ladies club at Plainville Town Hall. After the meeting, as we were leaving, we took the elevator to the lower level. My friend suggested we take a quick peek at the police area. I was born in Plainville and have been a lifelong resident for more than 70-some-odd years. I had heard about the need for a new police station and truly had not given it much thought. What I was about to see bothered me so much I was not able to sleep that night.

It is no wonder these people who have to work there, sometimes for 16 hours a day, doing what they call a double shift, want a new facility. What I saw was so demoralizing for both the officers and anyone else who has to go there that it is a shame.

Areas so cramped you couldn't talk without everyone overhearing your every word. Men trying to do paperwork standing at a counter. Rooms with no safety glass that could easily be broken by a prisoner or by accident.

When I have gone to the town hall and seen other offices I thought, well, how bad can the police station on the lower level be; it must be as nice as these areas. How wrong I was. I had such a sense of despair when I left there, I woke my husband when I got home to tell him how upset I was by what I had just seen.

The chief and his men are going to be holding open house for everyone to see what I saw, and if you don't think we need a new police facility, then please go. What an eye-opener. I would like to thank Sgt. Charles Smedick for his tour and apologize for all of us for allowing our police officers and the staff, who do so much to make our little town safe, to endure these working conditions for so many years.